


Never Enough

by Bdoing



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-20 19:29:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bdoing/pseuds/Bdoing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose/TenToo, years after TenToo's creation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Enough

She would never forget the day that he told her she could never be enough, and she would never forget the day she told him the same.

Right after the Doctor left, it was bliss. She finally had her Doctor (even if he wasn’t quite her Doctor), and he could finally accept his feelings for her - he was human. She wouldn’t grow old and die by his eternally-youthful side.

But… well, she had only really seen one side of the Doctor. She’d only really ever seen him while he was on an adventure, while he was always getting into trouble, while he was riding one wave of adrenaline right into the next. While he was happy.

But this regeneration… well, he didn’t have that. He couldn’t keep up that life. They weren’t in an adventureless life, of course, and he meddled wherever he was able, but those momentary rays of light and adrenaline weren’t enough to give him his fix, weren’t enough to keep him happy. He kept trying, ended up joining some weird branch of the government, putting his knowledge to use, but it was never the same.

He told her one night. That he couldn’t stand being here. That it was wearing at his soul, wearing it thin, and he could feel it, paper-thin and brittle as glass, ready to shatter.

Imagine that.

Imagine lying next to the love of your life, the man you would - and have - given up literally everything for at the drop of a hat, a man you’ve watched die and be reborn, a man you sacrificed yourself to save and then fought tooth and nail against all odds just to  _see_  again. Imagine that it’s just after making love, the sweat still glistening on your chest, your arm draped over his solid chest, your face burrowed into his side, his hand playing idly with your hair.

And then imagine being told you’re not good enough. You’re not enough for him. You can’t ever be enough.

And then imagine the next few months, where her wonderful Doctor just stopped trying. He had resigned himself to a boring, monodimensional, linear and not at all wibbly-wobbly singular lifetime as a human, and while he swore up and down in a number of otherworldly languages that he could think of no one he would rather be living out his life with than Rose, she could tell that his heart wasn’t in it. She wasn’t enough for him.

His real love would always be the TARDIS, and she was lost to him now.

And as he withdrew from her emotionally, her heart, not used to being unsupported, cast about wildly, trying to find somewhere else to rest, but finding no one - she was very openly with the Doctor, who had formally adopted the name John Smith. Eventually her heart drew back inside herself, as well, matching her darling lover.

She would never forget the day that he told her she could never be enough, and she would never forget the day she told him the same.

Imagine.

Imagine having lived through months of private heartbreak, secret sorrow, and still living with the man you were slowly learning not to love. Imagine resigning yourself to a life of Not Quite Good Enough.

And imagine, after months of this, him finally saying that everything would be okay, he would adjust and get used to it, his human half was resilient enough.

And imagine having to break his heart back.

Because he could never get that chance back.

She fought for him, and he refused to do the same.

He could never be enough.


End file.
